AM­BER LIU

K-POP STAR
IS GO­ING SOLO, WITH DE­SIGNS ON US STAR­DOM

Am­ber Liu, one of the most recog­nis­able stars in one of the world’s most pop­u­lar gen­res of mu­sic, has never been afraid to take some hits. The 26-year-old Chi­nese Amer­i­can singer was born and raised in LA be­fore a South Korean la­bel dis­cov­ered her at a Kore­atown fes­ti­val and shot her to star­dom half­way around the world in a third, new cul­ture. But as Liu tran­si­tions into a solo artist with an eye on US pop fame, she’ll have to take up a whole dif­fer­ent fight. “I was ter­ri­fied to go solo. It’s lonely do­ing it by my­self,” said Liu. “But I wanted to chal­lenge my­self. Sit­ting on my butt wait­ing on op­por­tu­ni­ties won’t do me any good.”

The last two years were tran­si­tional for K-pop and “hal­lyu,” the um­brella term for the glossy, fan-deliri­ous pop cul­ture orig­i­nat­ing from South Ko­rea. On one hand, the genre fi­nally had its US pop break­through when the group BTS topped the